Confessions of Successful Asian Women

Sukhi Singh is the founder of the multi-million dollar Indian food company, Sukhi’s. Sukhi is responsible for bringing Indian food to mainstream America through venues like farmer’s markets, Wholefoods and Costco. Sukhi faced a lot of twists and turns in her entrepreneurial journey including a failed deli but she rose up with the help of her family. Listen to the podcast to learn more about her incredible journey from holding a blender and a bucket to running a successful enterprise.  

Optimist. Dreamer. South Asian Fashion Game Changer. Tia Bhuva created the Cancan skirt and Saree Silhouette to wear under the traditional 6 yard saree. Tia gained influence among South Asian women when her tutorials on various saree draping styles skyrocketed in popularity and inspired Disney Princess looks, casual looks and re-purposed the silk saree. From formal occasions to casual cool, Tia’s styles continue to make the saree accessible and easy to wear for the everyday 21st century woman.

Mai Ton brings over 15 years of experience to her role as VP of People for tech companies.

Mai transformed companies into helping them become "Great Places to Work" according to Fortune magazine.

She is a frequent speaker and shares her HR leadership and management experience to help others in the competitive landscape specific to Silicon Valley.

Yasmine Khan leads Design Research at Credit Karma in San Francisco where she brings the financial journeys of real people from diverse backgrounds into the workplace. She is a budding stand up comic. In 2014, Yasmine lost her brother to a heroin overdose. This profound loss has brought urgency to her drive to work with institutions to elevate the importance of making personal connections with the "people behind the numbers" as we work to understand and solve social problems

Nancy Hoque is a multipotentialite, as she is a woman of many different interests and creative pursuits in life. Nancy was a solutions engineer, designing and aiding the sales of mission critical communications for the Federal Government and Department of Defense (DOD) space, she was the founder of a modest fashion scarf ecommerce business, sixteenR scarves, and she is pursuing a Masters of Business at the prestigious Hass School of Business in Berkeley, California.

Minara Rahman is the founder of Hijabi Life, a Muslim lifestyle blog about being Muslim in America, food, fashion, beauty, and parenting. As a Muslim American in social media, she felt a void of Muslim lifestyle blogs particularly for women of different sizes.  She gets candid about the hurdles and challenges of working in the professional space.

Dian Alyan started her career as an engineer for the leading multinational company, Proctor Gamble.  On December 26, 2004, the tsunami devastated Indonesia taking 250,000 lives with it.  Dian lost forty family members in the tsunami disaster. Suddenly, there were 25,000 orphans in her town alone who needed homes.

Dian channeled her pain and grief into finding her mission in life.  The tsunami led Dian to find GiveLight.org where built homes for more than 800 orphaned children in 11 countries (and counting).

Zahra Noorbakhsh is a Feminist Muslim, Iranian-American comedian and the cohost of the award winning podcast #GoodMuslimBadMuslim. She has her own one woman standup show and she was a contributor to the NY Times Featured anthology, “Love InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women”.

Melanie Elturk made the hijab (Muslim head scarf) mainstream through her modest fashion brand, Haute Hijab.  She launched the company in 2010 and since then, it’s the fastest growing modest fashion line with close to 200K followers on Instagram and Snapchat.  Haute Hijab has been featured in Elle, New York Times and the Today show.

Zahra Billoo is a civil rights attorney and the Executive Director of the San Francisco Bay Area office of the Council on American‐Islamic Relations (CAIR‐SFBA). Zahra is a leading voice on the civil rights of American Muslims. She led the fight against the Muslim ban and spoke at the Women's March.

Twenty four years ago, Sandhya Patel broke into one of the toughest industries as a minority woman. Sandhya Patel changed the face of meteorology as she broke barriers with hard work, perseverance and grit to be where she is today.

Nafisa Bakkar and her sister, Selina, launched Amaliah from their mother's kitchen table in 2015 as an Instagram page to curate Muslim-friendly clothes from top brands.

Since then, that page has grown into an online community of more than 250,000 Muslim women. Amaliah has been featured in Forbes, CNN and Wired.

Dr. Sonia Patel practices psychiatry in Honolulu and is the author of the critically acclaimed young adult novel, “Rani Patel in Full Effect”.  She is especially passionate about helping teens work through the emotional trauma of sexual, physical, and mental abuse. Sonia loves to rap and write rhymes in her spare time.

Listen to Popinjay’s CEO Saba Gul, who started out from MIT in a career in engineering and is now making a global social impact through connecting indigenous craft to global markets, and to connect the makers of products to their consumers.

Dr. Kimberly Chang is an activist family doctor who has been leading the way for policy change to prevent human trafficking and provide better health care for young Asian girls who have been victims of sex trafficking. Based at Asian Health Services in Oakland, Dr. Chang is on the forefront of building the capacity of community health centers to care for patients who are at-risk or are being trafficked. She even co-founded HEAL Trafficking, an organization acronym that stands for “Health, Education, Advocacy, & Linkage” to help end human trafficking and support its survivors.

Join me for this special episode of Confessions of Successful Asian Women. Mentoring is my confession for success.  Hear directly from two global female leaders about their experience working in the US and discovering their leadership voice through the TechWomen program, an initiative of the US Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.  TechWomen’s mission is to empower, connect, and support the next generation of women leaders in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) from the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia through mentorship and exchange.

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A surfing trip that became a mission to help refugees in Lesvos, Greece, listen to the heartwarming story of Dr. Shinkai Hakimi.  A firm believer in the power of education for all, Dr. Hakimi, a native of Afghanistan and a former refugee, grew up in a small farm town in Iowa and is now a leading pulmonologist in Northern California.  She is a board of director of the non-profit, Sahar, which aims to get more girls in school in Afghanistan. 

Hosai Mojaddidi is the co-Founder of www.mentalhealth4muslims.com where she advocates for and writes about various mental health related topics tailored for Muslims. She has served the American-Muslim community for nearly 20 years as an activist, writer/editor, mediator, interfaith organizer, and public speaker, covering a variety of topics including women's issues, marriage/family, education, self development, interfaith bridge building, and spirituality.

Hosai Mojaddidi is the co-Founder of www.mentalhealth4muslims.com where she advocates for and writes about various mental health related topics tailored for Muslims. She has served the American-Muslim community for nearly 20 years as an activist, writer/editor, mediator, interfaith organizer, and public speaker, covering a variety of topics including women's issues, marriage/family, education, self development, interfaith bridge building, and spirituality.

Hosai Mojaddidi is the co-Founder of www.mentalhealth4muslims.com where she advocates for and writes about various mental health related topics tailored for Muslims. She has served the American-Muslim community for nearly 20 years as an activist, writer/editor, mediator, interfaith organizer, and public speaker, covering a variety of topics including women's issues, marriage/family, education, self development, interfaith bridge building, and spirituality.

Hosai Mojaddidi is the co-Founder of www.mentalhealth4muslims.com where she advocates for and writes about various mental health related topics tailored for Muslims. She has served the American-Muslim community for nearly 20 years as an activist, writer/editor, mediator, interfaith organizer, and public speaker, covering a variety of topics including women's issues, marriage/family, education, self development, interfaith bridge building, and spirituality. 

A rising name in the world of dance, known for her powerful and evocative storytelling, technical precision, delicacy, and grace, Farah Yasmeen Shaikh is breaking new ground, bringing a clairvoyant voice to the contemporary stage, whilst simultaneously maintaining the deep roots and traditional aspects of Kathak.  

Dr. Guneeta Singh Bhalla is a physicist turned founder of the 1947 Partition Archive.   After a 2008 visit to the oral testimony archives at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial she was inspired and began interviewing Partition witnesses in 2009.  This led to the concept of crowd sourcing oral histories of Partition, there by engaging the public in recording the people's history of the world's largest mass human displacement.  In 2011, The 1947 Partition Archive was born. 

Dr. Amita Roy Shah is an author, educator and thought leader.  Amita made it her life’s mission to empower parents to invest in the cultural wellbeing of children so that they become connected to their identities and increase their curiosity for other cultures of the world.  Amita published two children’s books, Lights, Camera, Diwali! and It’s Time For Holi!.

Sheba Najmi’s mission in life is to create social impact through technology and design in order to change the way people interact with their governments.  Sheba is the Founder and Executive Director of Code for Pakistan, a non-profit that is improving the lives of citizens through creating innovation in public services in Pakistan.  Her mission is to give a voice to citizens.  Sheba also pays a tribute to her friend, the late Sabeen Mahmud who was murdered in 2015.

Sheba Najmi’s mission in life is to create social impact through technology and design in order to change the way people interact with their governments.  Sheba is the Founder and Executive Director of Code for Pakistan, a non-profit that is improving the lives of citizens through creating innovation in public services in Pakistan.  Her mission is to give a voice to citizens.  Sheba also pays a tribute to her friend, the late Sabeen Mahmud who was murdered in 2015.

Jane Bolander broker barriers as one of the first Asian women to enter the sports public relations industry when she founded her own firm, JSY Public Relations, in 2005.  As CEO and Founder of JSY PR, Jane and her colleagues strive to gain the best national exposure for their clients, which include famous sports celebrities like Yao Ming.  JSY PR also develops charitable foundations and initiatives.   

Jane’s world changed on December 26th, 2015.  She was diagnosed with leukemia and needed a bone marrow transplant fast.  Jane is fighting for her life right now and is waiting for her transplant.  

Farheen Umar is a documentary producer/director with works that have broadcast on PBS and international television.  Farheen’s first documentary, “Women of Islam-Veiling and Seclusion” sets the record straight on Muslim women and the veil.  Her second documentary, “Farah”, was filmed in the USA and Palestine over four years. Farheen has spoken at numerous forums in USA on the topic of independent filmmaking, women in filmmaking and misrepresentation of Islam and Middle East in USA.

Ching Valdezco helps professionals present, communicate, and influence more effectively.  She had a long standing career working in global companies, which started in the Philippines and ended in the US.  Fifteen years later into her career and three countries later, Ching decided to make a career transition and delved into the training world, where she is doing leadership development for Exec-Comm, a global training company.

Arezoo Riahi serves as Director of TechWomen, an initiative of the U.S. Department of State implemented by IIE, which bring together emerging women leaders in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) from across the globe with their counterparts in the Bay Area.  Arezoo’s work emphasizes women’s leadership and harnesses the power of technology to promote social empowerment and positive change, particularly in the developing world.

Myra Nawabi is a Senior Project Engineer with LockHeed Space Systems, a Mentor to several women in tech organizations, and a facilitator of the largest Lean In circles in CA.

As a former refugee from Afghanistan, she has had her fair share of adversity. Myra’s mission in life is to help women increase self-confidence and to give back to her community.   

Shradha Balakrishnan spent 6+ years studying and working in Japan before moving to the US.  Shradha managed technology-driven social impact programs sponsored by the US State Department and is currently a Product Manager at GoDaddy.

Michelle Nicole Ng is the owner and photographer for Michelle Nicole Photography.  Find out how Michelle's passion followed her and the journey she took to become a craftswoman.  She has traveled around the world for photography and has been featured in several publications. 

Joy Lin is a Music Industry professional and Career Strategist. She made a commitment to build a purposeful personal and professional path. She recently founded her platform, Quarter Life Joy, to inspire and coach millennials to architect a career and life that serves their unique goals and strengths.

Shalu Saluja is a mother, wife, and General Counsel.  Shalu is a doer, go getter and a lifelong learner.  She defines success as having a happy, well balanced family and a purpose- which is doing positive things and making a contribution.

Born in South Korea and adopted by Caucasian parents from the Midwest, Heather Donnell is a woman of many possibilities.  She is a technical writer in her day job, filmmaker in the rest of her life and a yoga instructor to keep sanity and to share that joy with others.  Heather’s philosophy is when you love something its firing every creative cell in your body, even if its work.

Heather wrote, directed and produced her film, Mommy, Murder and Me, which was an official selection of several film festivals.

Salehah Hassan Janjua is one of the first technical recruiters in the Seattle Facebook office. I am thrilled to share Salehah’s story in how she lives by the Facebook motto “fail harder” and uses rejection as a learning tool. 

Minal Mehta is the Co-Founder and President of BollyX and her mission is to empower people who have a passion for dance and fitness, to build a vibrant community around healthy living and to share the joy of fitness with others.  
 

This podcast is about how Tehniat Cheema stands up for her beliefs and chose a career path that is not sought out by Asian parents.  Tehniat is a trail blazer in her community who is sowing the seeds for a confident and empathetic future generation.

Spojmie Nasiri is a former Afghan refugee turned Principal Immigration Attorney who is helping make a difference in people’s lives.  Spojmie took her own personal struggle as a refugee from Afghanistan and made it her life mission to give back to the community.

Episode 1 features Masuma Mansuri who is the Founder and Creative Director at Pink BANOO. Masuma launched her South Asian women’s clothing brand benefiting girls’ education in need in May 2014.  Find out from this episode how Masuma overcame barriers and broke into the fashion industry without having a formal education on the subject, challenged herself and dared greatly after a five year career hiatus and helped over one hundred and fifty girls (still counting) receive an education.